An Iron Rose

by Peter Temple

  ‘So-so. Creeping age. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Two things. One’s a favour.’

  ‘ “And every favour has its price/paid not in coin/but in flesh/slice by slice.” Know that poem?’

  ‘Engraved on the mind,’ I said. ‘After two hundred hearings. I need to find someone.’

  ‘We all do. It’s the human condition.’

  ‘Melanie Loreen Pavitt.’ I spelled the surname. ‘Born November 1966. Discharged from Kinross Hall November 1983. No known family. No fixed address after 1979.’

  I’d gone back to the Kinross Hall print-out after talking to Dr Crewe. It said that in October 1983, in the week that Simon Walsh found the naked girl on Colson’s Road, a girl called Melanie Pavitt turned seventeen and reached the end of her two-year stay at Kinross Hall. It was a straw.

  ‘Thirty-two now,’ Berglin said. ‘What’s Kinross Hall?’

  ‘Place of safety, girls’ juvenile detention centre, whatever they call them now.’

  ‘Out your way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what line you in now? Blacksmith and missing persons?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘And the second thing?’

  ‘I hear Carlie Mance was in that pub in Deer Park with Bianchi close to the day.’

  There was a long silence. I could hear smoke expelled. Then Berglin said, ‘Bianchi’s dead, you hear that?’

  ‘Carlie’s dead too.’

  ‘I think this thing’s pretty much closed, Mac.’ Berglin’s voice was as close to sympathetic as it got.

  ‘Closed? Someone cuts Lefroy’s throat, rapes Carlie Mance, cuts her throat, walks away with a few million bucks in smack. On my watch. It’s closed? It’s a fucking unsolved crime. How does it get to be closed?’

  Silence again. Then he said, ‘Where’d you hear this Deer Park stuff?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘Jesus. And you want me to what?’

  ‘Tell them to get out the file and start looking at Bianchi. Nobody looked at Bianchi.’

  Berglin blew smoke. ‘Mac, you look at Bianchi, who else are you looking at?’

  ‘That’s what I mean. I hear he’s about to make deputy Pope.’

  ‘You hear right. And you’re suggesting I dump a bag of fresh dog shit in the Vatican airconditioning. I’ll have to think about that. Give it a little thought. What’s your number? This Pavitt, I’ll tell you in the morning.’

  I gave him the number. Then I said, ‘I’m clean. You know that, don’t you?’

  Silence. A sigh. ‘In so far as I can be said to know anything,’ said Berglin. ‘Yes.’

  I was cutting twelve millimetre steel rods with the power hacksaw when the nose of a red Porsche appeared in my line of sight through the open smithy door. I cut the power, took off the helmet and went outside.

  A big man, in his forties, overweight, bald, little ponytail, dark beard shadow, corduroy bomber jacket with leather collar, was getting out of the car. Another man was in the passenger seat. ‘Afternoon,’ he said. ‘Mac Faraday?’

  I said yes. He came over and put out a big hand. I shook it. Soft hand, gold chain around his wrist.

  ‘Andrew Stephens,’ he said. ‘Sorry to butt in. Passing by. Can we talk for a minute?’

  It took a second for the name to register. ‘It’s warmer inside,’ I said.

  We went into the smithy. He looked around like someone seeing for the first time a place where people worked with their hands.

  ‘So what do you make here?’ he said.

  ‘Anything. Gates, fences, fighter aircraft.’

  Stephens laughed, a girlish giggling laugh showing perfect teeth, capped. His head was pear-shaped. ‘That’s funny,’ he said. He went over to the bench, took out a white handkerchief, wiped the bench, sat down, thighs wide apart.

  ‘Saw Irene Barbie this morning,’ he said. ‘She told me you were interested in Ian’s death, whether it was suicide.’

  I nodded.

  Stephens pulled at his ponytail. ‘Great friend of mine, Ian,’ he said. ‘Can’t believe he’s gone.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  He took a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket, waved it at me inquiringly, lit one with a slim gold lighter, blew smoke out of his nose. He was wearing a Rolex wristwatch. ‘I’d like to think he didn’t commit suicide,’ he said. ‘Irene said you asked about pethidine. What made you ask that?’

  ‘Heard it somewhere,’ I said.

  Stephens took a drag, sighed smoke. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Poor bastard. Irene didn’t know. Ian suffered from depression, came on him in his twenties. We all tried to help, all his friends. Wasn’t anything you could do. Nothing. Out of anyone’s control. Pethidine’s the only reason he didn’t kill himself years ago.’

  He took out the handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘I gather a friend of yours was found dead recently too,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know what it’s like until you lose someone like that. Rather bloody not know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stood up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was coming this way, thought I’d stop and say, you find out anything that makes you think Ian didn’t kill himself, I’d be grateful if you’d tell me. We all would. I know Tony Crewe-y’know Tony Crewe, the Attorney General? Close friend of Ian’s, of mine. Tony would appreciate hearing anything like that.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘But I think he killed himself.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what’s most likely. Wonderful bloke, lovely. Well. That’s life.’

  We went outside. The other man was out of the Porsche now, leaning against it, smoking a small cheroot. He was big, thick-necked, face like a ten-year-old on steroids.

  ‘While I’m here,’ Stephens said, ‘I’m thinking of getting someone to look after the maintenance on my properties. Big job, mainly supervision. Well paid. Think something like that would suit you?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  He nodded, put out his hand. ‘Anything makes you think Ian’s death’s other than the way it looks, you let me know. I mean first. Before you tell anyone else. That way, we make sure everything’s properly investigated. Quickly, too, I can guarantee that. Tony Crewe will see to that. Okay? And I’ll make sure you’re not out of pocket for any expenses. My duty to the family.’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know,’ I said.

  ‘Good man.’ He took out a wallet, gave me a card, tapped me on the arm.

  They got into the car and drove off. I heard the engine note turn to a howl as they took the first hill.

  I started at full forward, a position in the Brockley side where the ball was seen so rarely that a full forward had once gone home at the end of the third quarter and no-one noticed until the team was in the pub.

  This Saturday was different. We were playing Bentham. I arrived about thirty seconds before the start, missing Mick Doolan’s tactical briefing and inspirational rev-up. He got his motivational material from studying a six-pack of videos called Modern Meisters of Motivation bought for $2.50 at a trash and trivia market. The players, many having their last cigarette before quarter-time, found messages such as Sell the SIZZLE not the STEAK and Don’t SEE to BELIEVE, BELIEVE to SEE extremely powerful: aflame, the Brockley side would stroll out, tugging at their jocks. The usual result: five goals down at quarter-time.

  Not today. Either a new video found or Mick had fed the men elephant juice. Billy Garrett was, without effort, leaping free of the earth’s grip. Players who routinely handballed into the ground or to the other side were sending the ball to within metres of team-mates. Even Flannery seemed fresh from a Swiss rejuvenation clinic, backing into packs and coming out with the ball. From all over the field, players were kicking the ball in my direction. It was unnerving but I took four marks, kicked two goals and a behind. At quarter-time, we were four goals up.

  As we trooped off, I saw Allie on the bonnet of her truck, leaning back against the windscreen, legs crossed at the ankle. She was
wearing a red quilted jacket and a scarf, and you could see the colour in her cheeks from thirty metres. There was a man lounging next to her, floppy dark hair, sallow, young. She gave me the thumbs up, hand cocked forward. Three things went through my mind. One, she’d come to watch me play without being asked. Two, she’d come with another man. Three, don’t be a stupid prick.

  In the second quarter, Bentham put a man called String Woodly at fullback. He consisted almost entirely of thin rubbery arms that he wound around you like pipe cleaners while pretending to be interested in taking a mark. No-one had ever seen him take a mark, but very few opposing players had got one while wrapped in String. Carrying him around was exhausting. Billy complained to the umpire. This didn’t work. I resorted to falling over in his embrace, trying to land on him with an elbow in some painful spot. This didn’t work either. I kept landing on my elbow with String on top of me. Finally, I had Flannery sent over and we had a chat.

  The next time the ball came our way, coming down through the mist, Flannery got close behind the two of us, pulled out the back of String’s shorts. Using the waistband elastic as a step, he ran up String’s back and plucked the ball from the sky. String let me go, falling over forward, clutching at his shorts, now around his knees.

  ‘That’s not in the bloody game,’ he said, offended, as Flannery landed on his right shoulder.

  ‘Stick around, beanpole,’ Flannery said, getting ready to kick. ‘Show you lots not in the game.’ He took two paces and kicked the ball through the middle. He looked around at me, astounded by his feat. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Haven’t kicked a goal since school.’

  ‘That long,’ I said. ‘Since you were twelve.’

  String wasn’t the same after his experience, and Flannery and I saw off a few other Bentham spoilers before the day was over. We ran out ten-goal winners. No-one could remember Brockley winning by ten goals. We went back to the Oak in a state of high excitement, singing one another’s praises. Nothing disturbed our joy until only the hard core remained.

  ‘Was a time,’ said Trevor Creedy, ‘when Brockley won by bloody ten goals every second week.’ He was a small man with close-set eyes, now murky, the kind of supporter who finds victory deeply unsatisfying. ‘That was,’ he said, ‘before they starting pickin girls. And makin blokes coach never kicked a footy.’

  ‘Trev,’ Mick said, ‘been meanin to ask ya. How’d ya like to share the coach’s job? I mean, with a view to takin it over?’

  Creedy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ha,’ he said. ‘Tryin to bloody buy off ya critics. Won’t bloody work with me.’

  He left, now a happier man.

  ‘Lovely fella,’ said Flannery. ‘Fixed his car for him, took it for a spin, see how it goes. When I give him the bill, he takes off fifty cents for petrol. Don’t expect me to pay for your joyridin, he says.’

  Mick’s mobile trilled. He had a brief conversation, then he said, ‘Vinnie, me own Gestapo’s on the way. Let’s have a lightnin round for the survivors.’

  The dog joined me as I stepped out of the door, suddenly aware that no area of my body was without its own dull pain. A full moon gave a pale and cold daylight when the clouds parted. Both limping a bit, the dog and I walked down the road and down the lane.

  I was in the office, going through Allie’s work diary and writing up invoices, when I heard the car. Marcia Carrier was getting out of her BMW when I reached the door. She didn’t look like an Olympic dressage contestant today. Today she looked like an Olympic skier, apres ski: dark hair loose, big cream polo-necked sweater, camel-coloured pants. She looked healthy and fit, like someone who ran and swam and had a lot of wholehearted sex in front of open fires, followed by yoghurt milkshakes.

  ‘Mac,’ she said, ‘I rang the number you gave me, no reply. So I drove over on the off-chance.’

  ‘Nice to see you,’ I said.

  ‘Got a few minutes?’

  ‘Hours. Days. Kitchen’s the only warm room in the house.’

  ‘I was hoping for the forge.’

  ‘Forge’s having a rest today. Sunday is forge’s day of rest.’

  The kitchen didn’t look too bad. Spartan but clean. I pulled another captain’s chair in front of the stove. Mick Doolan had sold me six for two hundred dollars: ‘To you, Moc, a gift. What I paid for them. Less. I think about it now, less. Much less.’

  ‘I’ll make coffee,’ I said.

  ‘Mac, sit,’ she said, lacing her fingers. ‘I have to tell you something and I’m embarrassed about it…’

  I sat down.

  ‘When you came to see me about Ned Lowey, I think I said it was going to nag at me.’ She was studying her left hand on the arm of the chair. It was older than her face.

  ‘I remember.’

  A spray of rain, like gravel thrown, hit the window. She tensed. Our eyes met.

  ‘Well, it did. I went back to the files, looking for something that might have happened while Mr Lowey was working at Kinross. I found something. About an hour ago.’

  ‘Happened to a girl?’

  She nodded. ‘Two girls.’

  ‘When you were in charge?’

  ‘I was new. Took over in 1983, into a nightmare. The place was run like a mini-kingdom, all these places were, minimal record-keeping, incompetent staff, all sorts of kickbacks with suppliers and contractors, ghosts on the payroll, you name it. My predecessor might have been a wonderful man but he was completely out of touch with what was going on around him. And to make things worse, Kinross wasn’t even getting the funding it was entitled to. So I cleaned up the obvious rorts and got a proper reporting system going. Then I left the day-to-day running to my deputy. He seemed to be an honest person. I devoted most of my time to working on the department and the minister to get Kinross’s funding up to speed.’

  ‘The girls,’ I said.

  She clasped her hands, face unhappy. ‘Mac, I found a report in Daryl Hopman’s confidential file. He was my deputy. I’ve never seen the file before, didn’t know it existed. And I only found it by chance.’

  ‘What kind of report?’

  ‘It involves two girls. I should have been told about it and I wasn’t.’

  She paused. I waited.

  She sighed again. ‘It also involves Mr Lowey. I’m sorry to tell you that. I know how much he meant to you.’

  ‘Involves?’ I could feel the blood in my head.

  Marcia put her hands through her hair. ‘I’ll just say it. The girls were caught coming back into the Kinross grounds shortly before four am one night in November 1985. They said they had been at Ned Lowey’s house and had been given drugs, amphetamines, speed, for sex.’

  I stood up. ‘Not possible, a mistake. Not Ned. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marcia said. ‘I’m really sorry. I felt I had to tell you.’

  I went to the window, looked out, saw nothing. ‘What was done?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s unbelievable. Nothing was done about a serious allegation of criminal conduct. Nothing. It says everything about the way Kinross was run in the old days. I shudder to think what else may have been ignored like this. In the maintenance supervisor’s file I found a note from Daryl saying that Ned was not to be employed again. I presume Daryl wrote the report as some kind of insurance if word leaked out.’

  ‘Insurance?’

  ‘He may have planned to say that he had made a report to me and that I was the one who failed to act.’

  ‘The girls said Ned gave them drugs?’ Ned having anything to do with any drug other than a stubbie of Vic Bitter was inconceivable. But my treacherous inner voice said: What do you really know about Ned?

  Marcia unclasped her hands, pushed back her hair, started to speak, hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, Mac,’ she said, ‘but that’s not the whole story.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted to hold on to the Ned I loved.

  ‘The girls said Dr Barbie was at Ned’s house and had sex with them. Violent sex.’
>
  Ned going to see Ian Barbie in Footscray.

  Ned and Ian Barbie, both dead, hanged.

  The girl’s skeleton in the mine shaft. The newspapers Ned kept.

  Melanie Pavitt, naked and bleeding in Colson’s Road. About four kilometres from Ned’s house.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I said.

  Marcia got up, tugged at her sweater. ‘Nothing. I’m not going to do anything. They’re dead. Both men. What’s the point of doing anything now? The families have had enough pain.’

  She came over, put her hand on my arm. I could smell her hair, a rose garden far away.

  ‘Mac, I’ve destroyed Daryl’s report,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I think you and I are the only people who know about this. The two of us and the girls. They probably don’t even remember it. I’m protecting myself, I can’t deny that. I was in charge, I’m responsible for the girls’ welfare. But I’m a victim here too. I knew nothing about what happened. Daryl left this thing behind like a time bomb.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Marcia squeezed my arm gently. ‘Mac, I think I’m doing the right thing for everyone. Is it the right thing? If you think it isn’t, I’ll go public, take the consequences. If you think it is, we never speak of the matter again. To anyone.’

  What else was there to say? ‘Yes.’ I said. ‘It’s the right thing.’

  At her car, engine running, window down, she said, not looking at me, ‘God, I’m glad that’s over. Would you like to have a drink some time, dinner? Anything?’

  I pulled myself together. ‘Drink, dinner, followed by anything. And everything.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, hint of a smile.

  I watched the car go down the lane, turn, heard a little growl of acceleration. I didn’t want to go inside, didn’t know what to do with myself, got into the Land Rover and drove.

  Stan Harrop and his son, David, were in the northwest corner of the field nursery on Stan’s property, talking to the driver of a tip truck carrying a load of stones. I parked at the gate and made my way along the paths between raised north-south beds. David gave me a salute. He was about twenty-five, thin and sandy, with Stan’s big hands. Stan had waited until he was nearly fifty to take his shot at immortality with David’s mother.